!(short rant) && (long story)

So these last 2 months of my life have been quite topsy turvy. Everything was pretty much unexpected and now I am on my way to Banglore, which is referred to as the Silicon Valley of India.

All this started in mid Feb when one day my ceo dropped a mail to all of us saying he wants to covey something important. A little background story about my company before I go on. We were a bunch of 6-7 tech guys working on a location based analytics product and had a decent client base. I had joined them in November 2017 and I was very hopeful that I would get to learn a lot owing to the good seniors from reputed universities and their experience. Coming back to the day, the ceo called us and dropped a bomb on us that the funding is depleted and we only have enough money to pay you salaries for this month. "We didn't anticipate that this day will come but currently we are in talks with some companies that are looking to acquire us. I am very much hopeful that we will figure something out by the end of this month(Feb). Until then, I can't stop you from applying to other companies but don't reveal that we are in this situation." So, keeping my fingers crossed I was waiting for the acquisition and wasn't looking for any other opportunities.

The company work was under hold and during this time one of my friends approached me with his idea. Since I had nothing else to do, I agreed to work with him. I was living in Mumbai, the city with one of the highest living standards in India, and I was paying exorbitant rent without any income. There was no news until mid March when the ceo called and dropped bomb#2 that an Indonesian company is looking to acquire us and he had scheduled an interview for the entire team. This isn't what I had signed up for. Indonesia wasn't a country I had even considered, let alone leave the country. Still I appeared for the interview and it went very well.

No news from the company or the ceo after that. One of my friends advised me to start applying to other companies and not rely on this acquisition. Now the problem was I couldn't reveal about the acquisition in my interview, so I used to give some bullshit about me not liking the work here. The company didn't buy it because how can someone judge a company in just 4 months. So obviously I didn't clear the interviews, also partially because I didn't meet their technical requirements.

March end, I moved to my hometown in Gujarat because obviously I had started to get broke in this expensive-ass city. The friend with whom I was working with also didn't have any issue since it was just tech and coding and I could do it remotely. Comes mid-April when the ceo called and said the acquisition is done and gave me some details about it. For confidentiality sake I can't reveal the details but I figured enough red flags for me to go with it.

*Eye of the tiger playing in the background*
Now started my quest of finding a decent job. The edge I had now was that I could reveal about the acquisition to the other company. I started applying left right and center to any company I could find. Amazon, saavn and some good-ass Indian companies. The thing that now came in my way was my experience. I am 23 year old(soon to be 24) with around 20 months of experience. Everyone wanted a 3-5 year experience guy/girl. Soon, my entire optimism was draining and I even considered going back to my first company.

During this time, I got a call from this company in Banglore who were looking for a candidate which best suited my profile. I went all guns blazing and appeared for the interview. I had 6 rounds of technical interview plus 1 logical reasoning. And since I was giving the interview remotely, I had one round on each alternate working day. Everyday was a challenge and I spent the nights in anxiousness and anticipation. Meanwhile I was appearing for other interviews too, since I wasn't too hopeful about my chances in this one.

Cut to April 27, I got an offer from this company and without negotiating they offered me the package I was hoping for.

After this entire ordeal, I realised one thing. Whatever happens, happens for good. Looking forward to this new city, new company, new people and new environment.

Can someone just hack youtube comment database and delete all the comments saying "Who is watching this in 2018?" and any other comment along these lines. I mean on fucking all the vidoes I see these comments. FML

I was giving an interview this other day and I was sharing my screen with the interviewer.

Interviewer 😦: Is this linux you are using?
Me 😅: Ah yes. Since this is a coding round I am not comfortable on windows for coding.
Interviewer 😳: And this is your personal laptop?
Me 😁: Yes, since the only use of windows is primarily to play games and the games I play are usually supported on linux, I dont see any reason why my daily driver should be anything other than linux.
Interviewer 😯: What distro is this?? Looks cool.
Me 😆: Its Ubuntu with KDE Plasma. There are some really cool things in here which actually make my life quite easier.
Interviewer ☺️: I must check this out today itself. Lets start with the interview then.
Me 😊: *Blushing in my mind

And this is how you score some instant brownie points in an interview. Actually if truth be told, that laptop was actually my work laptop and my personal laptop has windows on it because nvidia and Assassin's Creed.

Talk about friendly fire.

#DeleteFacebook

Really upbeat quirky music on full blast. That really gets me pumped up.

*Story Time*
In my previous company, I had the best co-workers both technically and personally. So this one time we had a product launch scheduled and there was a shit load of tasks that had to be done before the launch. The entire team used to work for 18 hours straight almost daily to meet the deadline. Sometimes stress used to get the better of us, so to help ourselves relax, we used to play pranks on each other. Like this one time one of my friends had left his email logged in. Obviously we shot out a mail to the entire company group that I have become a dad. The funny part about this was he wasnt even married. So things like these used to keep us going and there was always laughter and fun going around.

Peer-to-peer connection.

🙂

Steam knows I will be buying a game tomorrow.

Next thing we know, the robots have taken over our civilization.

Stop teaching java on a fucking notepad.

Also, since I am from India, start teaching and putting more emphasis on python. Also not to mention git without which you cant live.

If not in schools, these should be made compulsory for CS grads in universities.

!(short rant)

Look I understand online privacy is a concern and we should really be very much aware about what data we are giving to whom. But when does it turn from being aware to just being paranoid and a maniac about it.? I mean okay, I know facebook has access to your data including your whatsapp chat (presumably), google listens to your conversations and snoops on your mail and shit, amazon advertises that you must have their spy system (read alexa) install in your homes and numerous other cases. But in the end it really boils down to "everyone wants your data but who do you trust your data with?"

For me, facebook and the so-called social media sites are a strict no-no but I use whatsapp as my primary chating application. I like to use google for my searches because yaa it gives me more accurate search results as compared to ddg because it has my search history. I use gmail as my primary as well as work email because it is convinient and an adv here and there doesnt bother me. Their spam filters, the easy accessibility options, the storage they offer everything is much more convinient for me. I use linux for my work related stuff (obviously) but I play my games on windows. Alexa and such type of products are again a big no-no for me but I regularly shop from amazon and unless I am searching for some weird ass shit (which if you want to, do it in some incognito mode) I am fine with coming across some advs about things I searched for. Sometimes it reminds me of things I need to buy which I might have put off and later on forgot. I have an amazon prime account because prime video has some good shows in there. My primary web browser is chrome because I simply love its developer tools and I now have gotten used to it. So unless chrome is very much hogging on my ram, in which case I switch over to firefox for some of my tabs, I am okay with using chrome. I have a motorola phone with stock android which means all google apps pre-installed. I use hangouts, google keep, google map(cannot live without it now), heck even google photos, but I also deny certain accesses to apps which I find fishy like if you are a game, you should not have access to my gps. I live in India where we have aadhar cards(like the social securtiy number in the USA) where the government has our fingerprints and all our data because every damn thing now needs to be linked with your aadhar otherwise your service will be terminated. Like your mobile number, your investment policies, your income tax, heck even your marraige certificates need to be linked with your aadhar card. Here, I dont have any option but to give in because somehow "its in the interest of the nation". Not surprisingly, this thing recently came to light where you can get your hands on anyone's aadhar details including their fingerprints for just ₹50($1). Fuck that shit.

tl;dr
There are and should be always exceptions when it comes to privacy because when you give the other person your data, it sometimes makes your life much easier. On the other hand, people/services asking for your data with the sole purpose of infilterating into your private life and not providing any usefulness should just be boycotted. It all boils down to till what extent you wish to share your data(ranging from literally installing a spying device in your house to them knowing that I want to understand how spring security works) and how much do you trust the service with your data. Example being, I just shared most of my private data in this rant with a group of unknown people and I am okay with it, because I know I can trust dev rant with my posts(unlike facebook).

I dont need no girlfriend. Stack is my bae.

PS: Please inform me if this is a repost but haven't seen this on devrant

No Mr. Uber, I don't want anyone even my family to know when I am riding nor I want to know when they ride.

Mouse pads are for poor people. Rich and genuine developers always use laptops.

*Walks off in a cloud of gold dust

My first Node application working properly. Best I've felt in years tbh.

Hey I am from India! Let's all rant together.

This is where US's bandwith is going